Bemoaning the state of American public diplomacy has become a cottage industry. Dozens and dozens of reports have appeared on how the US government's overseas outreach programs have failed to improve America's declining image abroad and move the needle of international polls in a direction favourable to the US.

There appears, however, to be some light at the end of the public diplomacy tunnel. It is, of course, most unlikely that the US will escape from this dark, very dark subterranean passage before the end of the Bush administration, given how widely despised its foreign policy is worldwide. But there are signs that public diplomacy - in its broadest and best sense, an effort by Americans to engage in a dialogue with the rest of the world - may once again make a positive difference in how their country is perceived overseas.

The announced resignation of under-secretary of state for public diplomacy Karen Hughes, a Bush confidante with little prior international experience, is an important element in this salvaging of US public diplomacy. She had become, in the words of Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, "a metaphor for the administration's larger Middle East policy, a noxious brew of hubris and naivete."

The departure of the tactless and parochial Hurricane Karen is joined by another positive development for US public diplomacy: a rebound in the number of international students enrolled in US schools. According to a just-released report by the Institute for International Education (IIE), the number of international students at US institutions of higher learning rose by 3% to a total of 582,984 in the 2006-2007 academic year, the first significant increase since 2001-2002. Initiatives taken by colleges and universities to make their student body more international played an important role in this upward tick.

To be sure, these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Marlene Johnson, executive director of Nafsa, the world's largest non-profit association dedicated to international education, notes that "when one considers the international context - the recent dramatic growth in international student enrolments in competitor countries, where proactive policies are in place to attract international talent, and the continuing robust growth in the number of internationally mobile students worldwide - it is clear we are not doing as well as we should be." Nevertheless, Johnson acknowledges that "[w]e are happy to see international enrolments continue to trend upward."

Meanwhile, study abroad by American students rose by 8.5% to a total of 223,534, according to the IIE. A favourite educational destination point has become Cairo, Egypt, where the number of American students at the American University has reached a record high of more than 400 this year, almost triple the number enrolled in 2002.

Eager to expand their international horizons, American universities are also making public diplomacy part of their curriculum. An institution with which I am affiliated - the recently founded University of Southern California Centre on Public Diplomacy, located on the campus that has the largest number of foreign students in the US - is offering a degree-granting program in the field. An increasing number of American blogs are now devoted to issues pertaining to public diplomacy.

The efforts of US education to reach out internationally are being matched by those of the American travel industry. Aware that the US share in global travel is shrinking, the private-sector Discover America Partnership proposes to make the United States more visitor friendly with a vastly improved visa system and more accommodating ports of entry. It is actively lobbying Congress to pass legislation to make crossing into the US a more civilised process.

Another private-sector group, Business for Diplomatic Action, led by advertising guru Keith Reinhardt, seeks to get the US business community more involved in raising America's stature overseas. This effort, BDA underscores on its homepage, "is not about ads or selling - it's about sensitising Americans to the extent of anti-Americanism today and its implications, transforming American attitudes and behaviours as necessary, building on the many positive perceptions of America that still exist and building new bridges of cooperation, respect and mutual understanding across cultures and borders through business-led initiatives."

In America, at last, the question is increasingly less about "why do they hate us?" as President Bush put it so crudely in 2001. It's now become: "What are we going to do for the world to respect us again?" Americans are finally taking public diplomacy into their own hands and not waiting for Bush to carry it out for them.